The Senate’s move last week dealt a new warning to US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly signalled his backing for the Saudi leadership even amid a mounting outcry the killing of Khashoggi, a critic of the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the devastating Yemen conflict.

“The recent position of the United States Senate, which has been built on baseless allegations and accusations, includes blatant interference in its internal affairs and the role of the kingdom at the regional and international level”, the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement released by the Saudi Press Agency on Monday.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, was murdered on October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul to obtain documents needed for his planned marriage.

In a unanimous vote on Thursday, the Senate approved the resolution condemning Khashoggi’s murder and calling Prince Mohammed – also known as MBS – “responsible” for it.

The senators’ move came after senior intelligence officials from the US spy agency reportedly said that such an operation would have needed the approval of MBS, the kingdom’s de facto leader.

After giving contradictory statements about the whereabouts of Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia admitted that the writer was killed inside its consulate and his body was dismembered. The kingdom maintains that Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of the killing, which Turkey said was ordered at the highest level of Saudi leadership.

“The kingdom has previously asserted that the murder of Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi is a deplorable crime that does not reflect the Kingdom’s policy nor its institutions and reaffirms its rejection of any attempts to take the case out of the path of justice in the kingdom,” the Saudi foreign ministry’s statement said.

Yemen war

On the Senate’s Yemen measure, which more broadly attacks Trump’s prerogative to launch military actions, 49 Democrats or their allies voted in favour, along with seven Republicans, while another three Republicans abstained.

Saudi Arabia launched a massive aerial campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in March 2015, aimed at restoring the government of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Since then, the US has been helping the Saudi-UAE military alliance with weaponry and logistical support. Until recently, it was also refuelling the alliance’s fighter jets which were responsible for the more than 18,000 raids carried out on the war-ravaged country, which, according to the United Nations is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

More than three-quarters of Yemen’s population – some 22 million people – need humanitarian assistance, while 11 million require dire help in order to survive.

The Senate resolutions cannot be debated in the House of Representatives before January, and are likely be vetoed in any case by Trump.

In its statement, the Saudi foreign ministry said “the kingdom hopes that it is not drawn into domestic political debates in the United States of America, to avoid any ramifications on the ties between the two countries that could have significant negative impacts on this important strategic relationship”.

Rand Paul blasts ‘deep state’ for shutting him out of CIA briefing

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) lashed out at the “deep state” Tuesday for excluding him and other senators from a briefing with CIA Director Gina Haspel on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

The briefing was limited to a select group of lawmakers, including leaders of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Foreign Relations Committee and Intelligence Committee.

The meeting comes after bipartisan outrage that Haspel didn’t attend an administration briefing for senators last week on Khashoggi’s killing, which took place at the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Turkey earlier this year.

Haspel was also sent to Capitol Hill as part of a bid to stave off a Senate vote on whether to pull U.S. support for Saudi-backed forces in Yemen.

Paul said that the exclusion of most senators was undemocratic and that Haspel should have testified before all senators.

“There are eight people in Congress who get briefings on intelligence,” Paul said. “That is not democracy. That is not democratic representation nor is it democratic oversight.

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Paul added that he only heard about the meeting from media reports.

“I think the very definition of the deep state is when the intelligence communities withhold information from Congress,” he said.

China, Saudi Arabia And The Trump Problem: Yes, The U.S. Is A Saudi Bitch, Sort Of

If you think that I like the truth behind that title then you have been drinking too much Corn Liquor. This is a true statement whether we like it or not, and personally I do not. Now I will explain myself to you before you shoot your computer. I am going to spit out some realities to you, then you decide for yourself if we (the U.S.) are indeed a ‘Saudi Bitch’, or not. Personally when I think of the word bitch I tend to think of a female dog or of a very hateful woman, but there are other meanings. I googled the term ‘being someone’s bitch’ to see what it had to say and here is what I found, I think it fits the definition of todays letter to you quite well. “Someone who gets treated with little respect and has to follow every order (of their master). Humiliating position of servitude.”

You may think, well how does this fit the current situation with President Trump, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and their leaders, now I will explain why it does. You may also be wondering about how does China fit into this equation, I will explain this outlier to you in just a moment. First, no country on Earth is self-sufficient as far as their own safety is concerned unless their energy supply is self-contained and all of us know that we are not, nowhere near it. Our Nation could have and should have been self supplying decades ago but because of our politicians and corporate greed we are at the mercy of those we get our energy supplies from, the biggest of these importers to us is Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Government has for many decades aligned ourselves with Saudi Arabia and with other Sunni led Nations like Egypt while Russia has been aligning themselves with Shia Nations like Syria, Iraqi and Iran. As most everyone knows, these two sects of Islam hate each other and they have been fighting a Civil War between them in the Middle-East now for about 1,400 years. Back in the early 1970’s Saudi Arabia agreed to put their oil market on the currency of the American Dollar. Being the Saudi’s had the most known oil in the world the other oil producers of OPEC followed suit. We, the American Government, agreed to supply and train the Saudi military and to protect the Saudi Royal Family in return.

Back in the early 1970’s the economies of Nations like China were a small fraction of what they are today so at that time they were not really in the market for massive oil imports, but now they are. Right now China gets a huge amount of their oil imports from Russia but that could easily change if the Saudis decided to drastically curb or even stop all of their imports to the U.S.. China could easily take up the vacuum if the Saudis cut us off. Think about it, all of the Middle-East being dominated by Russia and China with the U.S. totally shut out of the region. Also is the reality that if the U.S. Government angers the Saudi Royal family enough the Royal family could decide to quit accepting the U.S. Dollar and change the oil market to the Chinese Yuan which as of today is trading at one Dollar equals seven Yuan. What would our economy do if that flipped and it took seven Dollars to equal one Yuan? What would happen if OPEC shut off all oil imports to the U.S.? Back in 2008 our economy suffered about a 2% decline and it threw us into the deepest depression since the 1930’s, if the Saudis decided to change allegiance toward us it would make the 1930’s look like party time. Our economy would totally tank and not just from the loss of jobs in the ‘military industries’. Just the sheer size of China calling in their loans to us would bankrupt our country, today we owe China more than 10 trillion dollars of which we have no way to repay.

Folks, our culture here in the U.S. is not the culture of most other Nations and it definitely is not the same as the cultures of the Middle-East or of Asia. I know that the U.S. was founded on Christian morals and ethics even though our Founding Fathers did have a very warped concept of what that was. We here in the U.S. have a Constitution that all of our people and our Leaders are supposed to run our Country by, thanks to our Founding Fathers. Our Constitution may be based on Christian ideals but our Nation, by the Constitution, is not to be a ‘Church’ run Government. What I am trying to get at is that we cannot demand that other Nations obey our laws, our Constitution, or our morals. Donald Trump is a businessman, he has no clue about Christianity, ethics or our Constitution but he does recognise the power and authority of a Dictator and what a Dictator can do to business. President Trump does recognise what the Saudi Royal Crown Prince ‘MBS’ can put to bear on the U.S. businesses including his own. Simply put, the reason President Trump is now and in the future is going to kiss the ass of the Saudi Royal Family is business and business to him and to most people for that matter is more important than our morals. So, what are we as a people, as a nation, going to do? If we insist on our ethics and on our version of morals be followed by all Nations whom we do business with, then our Nation’s economy top to bottom, is going to hit rock bottom, or we can be the bitch of people like the Saudi Crown Prince. We as a Nation can not have it both ways, President Trump has chosen, it was easy for him as he doesn’t have any morals to fall back on. Our Nation’s Leaders have kissed the ass of big business for so long I have no doubt what our spineless Politicians will do now concerning the Saudi Crown Prince. So, have our Politicians over the past 45 plus years turned us into a Saudi Bitch, you decide!

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Corker wrote in a retweet of Trump’s statement questioning whether the crown prince was responsible for the death of U.S.-based dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Corker, who is set to retire as chairman of the Foreign Relations panel at the end of the year, recently criticized the White House for not sharing intelligence about the details of Khashoggi’s murder. He was killed last month by a team of Saudi agents after entering the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

The CIA recently concluded that Prince Mohammad was involved in the plan to kill Khashoggi based on an intercepted phone call and other evidence, according to multiple reports.

Trump, however, on Tuesday noted that King Salman and the crown prince have vigorously denied any knowledge of the planning or execution of Khashoggi’s murder.

“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in his statement.

Corker was the third prominent Senate Republican to criticize Trump’s statement on Tuesday.

He called earlier this month for sanctions against Saudi Arabia that went beyond the punishments the Trump administration has leveled against the 17 Saudi agents found to be directly involved in Khashoggi’s murder.

Corker praised those individual sanctions as “a significant step in that process that hopefully will involve additional action as well.”

“It is not in our national security interests to look the other way when it comes to the brutal murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” Graham said in a statement released late Tuesday afternoon.

Graham argued Tuesday that the Senate should act by voting on sanctions legislation.

“I firmly believe there will be strong bipartisan support for serious sanctions against Saudi Arabia, including appropriate members of the royal family, for this barbaric act which defied all civilized norms,” he said in his statement.

“While Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, the behavior of the Crown Prince — in multiple ways — has shown disrespect for the relationship and made him, in my view, beyond toxic,” he added.

Graham is one of several Republican cosponsors of the Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act, which would suspend weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, prohibit U.S. planes from refueling Saudi coalition aircraft involved in the civil war in Yemen, and require a report on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia.

The other GOP cosponsors are Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Todd Young (R-Ind.), members of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another member of the Foreign Relations Committee, earlier on Tuesday criticized Trump’s statement as promoting a “Saudi Arabia First” policy instead of an “America First” doctrine, as the president claimed.

Paul has called for a vote on legislation blocking an arms sale to Saudi Arabia that Trump has valued at $110 billion.

Trump slanders Khashoggi and betrays American values

PRESIDENT TRUMP on Tuesday confirmed what his administration has been signaling all along: It will stand behind Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even if he ordered the brutal murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In a crude statement punctuated with exclamation points, Mr. Trump sidestepped a CIA finding that the crown prince was behind the killing; casually slandered Mr. Khashoggi, who was one of the Arab world’s most distinguished journalists; and repeated gross falsehoods and exaggerations about the benefits of the U.S. alliance with the kingdom. Mr. Trump has betrayed American values in service to what already was a bad bet on the 33-year-old prince.
As with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump is justifying his affinity for a brutal and reckless leader by disregarding the findings of the U.S. intelligence community. The Post reported Friday that the CIA has concluded with “high confidence” — a rating it does not apply lightly — that Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, who while living in self-imposed exile in Virginia, wrote columns for The Post that were moderately critical of the crown prince.
Mr. Trump’s response is to grudgingly acknowledge that “it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event” before adding “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” He declares the truth unknowable and thus irrelevant: “We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder.”
In fact, the truth about Mr. Khashoggi’s death is not only knowable but largely known. Audio recordings in the CIA’s possession record his actual killing as well as phone calls from the hit team to Mohammed bin Salman’s close aides. Five members of the team have been identified as probable members of the crown prince’s personal security team.
While discounting these facts, Mr. Trump bases his continued backing for the regime on false claims, including his thoroughly debunked boast that Saudi Arabia will “spend and invest $450 billion” in the United States. He says the kingdom has “been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels,” though Riyadh is reportedly preparing to cut production to raise prices.
Worst of all, Mr. Trump libels Mr. Khashoggi, saying that “representatives of Saudi Arabia” had called him an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The crown prince did make those allegations in a phone call to the White House — but the regime itself was so embarrassed when The Post reported on the call that it denied making them. Mr. Khashoggi’s family has confirmed that he was not a member of the Brotherhood.
Mr. Trump concluded his statement by inviting Congress “to go in a different direction.” As in the Russia case, it must do so. Bipartisan legislation mandating sanctions for all those implicated in Mr. Khashoggi’s death is pending in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) last week gave us a statement indicating he wanted to know “what more would be done” by the administration before Congress responded. Now he knows. If Mohammed bin Salman is to be held accountable, as Mr. Corker said he must, the committee must act. The alternative is a world where dictators know they can murder their critics and suffer no consequences.

The president puts blind faith in dictators twice in one Fox News interview.

Time and time again, President Donald Trump seems to side with dictators over his own intelligence community. Take the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with the two most recent examples occurring during a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the CIA has concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman directly ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month.

Although the State Department subsequently released a statement trying to tamp down on the Times’s reporting, the CIA’s reported conclusion serves as the latest, strongest evidence that the crown prince lied to Trump when he repeatedly denied involvement in Khashoggi’s death.

During an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday, however, Trump indicated he doesn’t necessarily trust his intelligence community over the crown prince’s denials.

Asked by host Chris Wallace if he thinks the crown prince lied to him, Trump suggested nobody can really be sure about anything.

“I don’t know, you know, who can really know?” Trump said. “But I can say this — he’s got many people now that say he had no knowledge.”

Wallace interjected to press Trump, saying, “what if the crown prince, speaking to you, the president of the United States, directly lied to you?” But Trump indicated he’s not particularly bothered by that possibility.

“Well, he told me that he had nothing to do with it,” Trump continued. “He told me that I would say maybe five times at different points, as recently as a few days ago. … Will anybody really know? Will anybody really know?”

Trump’s comments about the crown prince weren’t the only time during the Fox News interview that he indicated he’s putting blind faith in a dictator.

The president responded to reports North Korea is expanding its missile program by telling Wallace, “Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. I don’t believe that. Could be.” Moments earlier, Trump touted his “very good relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Trump’s deference to Kim and the crown prince is reminiscent of the deference he’s shown Russian President Vladimir Putin, who denies meddling in the 2016 American presidential election despite the US intelligence community concluding otherwise.

“My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said. “I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump’s antipathy to the intelligence community dates back at least to early 2017, when top intelligence officials went public with their conclusion that Russia meddled in the presidential election on Trump’s behalf. The then-president-elect responded to that development by comparing the intelligence community’s tactics to those used by “Nazi Germany.”

WASHINGTON — Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday harshly condemned Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over his alleged role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, calling him “unhinged” and pointedly refusing to work with the prince in the future.

“The fact that he didn’t know about it is impossible for me to believe,” Graham said on Sunday’s “Meet The Press.” The South Carolina senator said he hasn’t been given an official briefing on the matter, but maintained that the conclusion that the crown prince had a role in Khashoggi’s murder should be clear to anyone with knowledge about the country.

“If he is going to be the face of Saudi Arabia going forward, I think the kingdom will have a hard time on the world stage,” Graham added. “They are an important ally, but when it comes to the crown prince, he is irrational, he is unhinged, and I think he has done a lot of damage to the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and I have no intention of working with him ever again.”

Graham said he doesn’t want to let the individuals who carried out the killing to become “the fall guy,” but instead, “I am going to do whatever I can to place blame where I believe it lies: I am going to put it at the feet of the crown prince who has been a destructive force in the Mideast.”

The senator noted that he previously had a lot of hope for the prince’s potential as a reformer in the region, but “that ship has sailed as far as Lindsey Graham is concerned.”

Graham’s language on Saudi Arabia stands in stark contrast to President Trump, who repeatedly told “Fox News Sunday” this weekend that the crown prince has continually denied involvement in the incident.

Asked whether the prince was lying, Trump responded, “he told me that he had nothing to do with it. He told me that, I would say, maybe five times at different points.”

The president also asked, “Will anybody really know? He did have certainly people that were reasonably close to him and close to him that were probably involved.”

On Sunday, Graham was asked about the bond between the crown prince, Trump, and Jared Kushner, and he said, “I’ll leave it up to the president to find out how to handle Saudi Arabia from the executive branch side.”

“From the legislative branch side, we’re going to do as much as we can, as hard as we can, to send a signal to the world,” he continued. “This is not how we expect an ally to act. What happened in Turkey violates every norm of civilized society and it will not stand. And if John McCain were alive today, he’d be the first one saying that.”

Graham also maintained that the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., the crown prince’s brother, Prince Khalid Bin Salman, should not be allowed back in to the United States as ambassador.

Also on “Meet The Press,” Graham publicly called on the president to move forward on the issue of criminal justice reform, asking him to “pick up the phone” and lobby Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring their bill on the issue to the floor.

“The Republicans are the problem here, not the Democrats,” Graham said.

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) Recordings related to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death have been passed on to Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.

Khashoggi was killed after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain paperwork for his marriage.

Speaking before his departure to Paris for World War I commemorations, Erdogan said: “We passed on the recordings. We gave them to Saudi Arabia, to America, to the Germans, French and the English — we gave them all.”

Erdogan said the killer, or killers, would be known to the 18 suspects identified by Turkish authorities — including 15 men who arrived from Saudi Arabia shortly before Khashoggi’s death.

He again called on Saudi Arabia to provide answers as to what happened to Khashoggi and his body,which has not yet been found.

Erdogan has previously demanded that Saudi Arabia hand over the 18 suspects for prosecution in Turkey but the kingdom has insisted that those responsible for Khashoggi’s death will be tried in Saudi Arabia.

Erdogan’s confirmation that recordings relating to Khashoggi’s death have been handed to key international players is the latest in a drip-feed of details released by Turkey in the weeks since the journalist disappeared.

Revelations from the Turkish side have helped to keep up diplomatic pressure on Saudi Arabia to explain what happened.

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron both want to get “greater detail” about the events surrounding Khashoggi’s killing, a French presidential spokesman said following a meeting between the pair Saturday in Paris.

Both leaders agreed “something very serious happened — that this assassination was serious and unacceptable,” the spokesman said at a briefing on the bilateral talks.

However, neither leader wants to do anything that could destabilize Saudi Arabia, the spokesman said, adding that the United States considered Saudi Arabia to be the “cornerstone of everything in the Middle East.”

The leaders did not discuss what should happen to the culprits, the spokesman noted, describing it as an “internal Saudi matter.”

The Saudis have presented shifting stories about the journalist’s fate, initially denying any knowledge before arguing that a group of rogue operators, many of whom belong to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s inner circle, were responsible for Khashoggi’s death.

The Saudi attorney general then said the Turkish side had provided information indicating that the killing was premeditated. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister and Energy Minister have both described Khashoggi’s death as “murder.”

Riyadh has maintained that neither bin Salman nor his father, King Salman, knew of the operation to target Khashoggi. US officials have said such a mission — including the 15 men sent from Riyadh — could not have been carried out without the authorization of bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler.

After Saudi Arabia admitted that Khashoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate, five high-ranking officials were dismissed, including bin Salman’s media chief and the deputy head of the Saudi intelligence service. Eighteen people were arrested.

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Just an average man who tries to do his best at being the kind of person the Bible tells us we are all suppose to be. Not perfect, never have been, don't expect anyone else to be perfect either. Always try to be very easy going type of a person if allowed to be.

Hi my name is Gemma and I am a teenage girl who likes to post things on my own website. What I post includes of my travels around, things that I think are annoying or bad, book reviews, series or movies I would recommend and a bunch of other things. 😜😘